Eckhardt did not raise his eyes. Once only, as in mute questioning, did

his gaze meet that of Gregory, then he knelt before the altar. His

ardent desire was about to be fulfilled. As this momentous time

approached, Eckhardt's hesitation in taking the irrevocable step seemed

to diminish--and gradually to vanish. He was even full of impatient

joy. Never did bridegroom half so eagerly count the hours to his

wedding, as did the German leader the moments which were for ever to

relieve him of that gnawing pain that consumed his soul. In the broken

fitful slumber of the preceding night he had seen himself chanting the

mass. To be a monk seemed to him now the last and noblest refuge from

the torments which gnawed the strings of his heart. At this moment he

would have disdained the estate of an emperor or king. There was no

choice left now. The bridge leading into the past was destroyed and

Eckhardt awaited his anointment more calmly.

Gregory's face was grave and to a close observer it would have appeared

to withhold approval from that which added greater glory to the Church,

as if anticipating proportionately greater detriment for the state. As

Eckhardt knelt in silent prayer, all but entranced in religious ecstasy,

he noted not the nearness of Benilo, who watched him like a tiger from

the half gloom of his station. The hush in the Basilica was well-nigh

oppressive. The Romans, who had flocked hither to witness the uncommon

sight of a victorious leader abandoning the life at a court for the

cassock of a monk, and perhaps inwardly calculating the immense

consequences of a step so grave, waited breathlessly until that step

should be accomplished. Those whose sympathies lay with the imperial

party were filled with grave misgivings, for if Eckhardt's example found

imitators in the German host, the cause of the emperor would grow weaker

in proportion as the prestige of the Romans and the monks increased.

The benediction had been pronounced. The Communion in both kind had

been partaken. The palms of Eckhardt had been anointed with consecrated

oil, and finally the celebration of the Holy Rite had been offered up in

company with the officiating Cardinal.

It was done. There remained little more than the cutting of the

tonsure, and from the world, which had once claimed him--from the world

to which he still unconsciously clung with fevered pulses,--Eckhardt was

to vanish for ever. As the officiating Cardinal of San Gregorio

approached the kneeling general, the latter chanced to raise his head.

A deadly pallor overspread his features as his eyes gazed beyond the

ecclesiastic at one of the great stone pillars, half of which was wrapt

in dense gloom. The ceremony, so splendid a moment ago, seemed to fade

before the aspect of those terrible eyes, which peered into his own from

a woman's face, pale as death. Throughout the church darkness seemed

suddenly to reign, The candles paled in their sconces of gold before the

glare of those eyes, calculated to make or mar the destinies of man.

Against the incense saturated gloom, her beauty shone out like a

heavenly revelation; she seemed herself the fountain of light, to give

it rather than to receive it. For a moment Eckhardt lowered his gaze,

little doubting but that the apparition was some new temptation of the

fiend, to make him waver at the decisive moment. The ceremony

proceeded. But when after a few moments, not being able to withstand

the lure, he looked up again, he saw her glittering in a bright

penumbra, which dazzled him like the burning disk of the sun. And as he

gazed upon the strange apparition, tall with the carriage of a goddess,

her eyes darting rays like stars, winging straight for his heart--and

she the very image of his dead wife, just as she had appeared to him on

that memorable night in the churchyard of San Pancrazio,--he hardly knew

whether the flame that lighted those orbs came from heaven to strengthen

his resolve, or from hell, to foil it. But from devil or angel

assuredly it came.

Her white teeth shone in the terrible smile, with which she regarded

him. The smooth alabaster skin of her throat glistened with a pearly

sheen. Her white robe, falling from her head to her feet, straight as

the winding sheet of death, matched the marble pallor of her complexion,

and her hands, seemingly holding the shroud in place, were as white as

fresh fallen snow.

As Eckhardt continued to gaze upon her, he felt the floodgates of his

memory re-open; he felt the portals of the past, which had seemed locked

and barred, swing back upon their hinges, grating deep down in his soul.

And with the sight of the phantom standing before him, so life-like, so

beautiful, all the mad longing bounded back into his heart. Gripped by

a terrible pain, he heard neither the chant, nor the words of the

Cardinal. Everything around him seemed to fade, but the terrible being

still held his gaze with those deep and marvellous eyes, that had all

the brightness and life of the sapphire seas.

Eckhardt felt he was being carried far from the sphere of the cloister

into a world at whose gates new desires were knocking. While he

mechanically muttered the responses to the queries, which the Cardinal

put to him, his whole soul began to rise in arms against the words his

tongue was uttering. A secret force seemed to drag them from him, he

felt the gaze of the thousands weighing upon him like a cope of lead.

Yet it seemed that no one in all that vast assembly heeded the strange

apparition, and if there appeared any hesitancy in Eckhardt's responses,

or a strange restlessness in his demeanour, it was charged to the

consciousness of the momentous change, the responsibility of the

irrevocable step, crushing life, ambition and hope.

But the countenance of the mysterious apparition did not change as the

ceremony progressed. Steadfastly, with tender and caressing gaze she

seemed to regard him, her whole soul in her straining eyes. With an

effort, which might have moved a mountain, Eckhardt strove to cry out,

that he would never be a monk. It was in vain. His tongue clove to the

roof of his mouth. Not even by sign could he resist. Wide awake, he

seemed to be in the throes of one of those nightmares, wherein one

cannot utter the words on which life itself depends. The apparition

seemed instinctively to read and to comprehend the torture, which racked

Eckhardt's breast. And the glance she cast upon him seemed so fraught

with the echoes of despair, that it froze his heart to the core.

Was it indeed but an apparition?

Was this terrible semblance to his dead wife more than a mere accident?

The chalice, with the blood of Christ, trembled in Eckhardt's hand. He

was about to pass it to his lips. But try as he might, he could not

avert his gaze. Those terrible eyes, the marble calm of the face of his

dead wife seemed to draw him onward,--onward.--Forgotten was church, and

ceremony, and vow; forgotten everything before that phantom from beyond

the grave. It held him with a power which mocked to scorn every effort

to escape its spell. The apparition lured him on, as almost

imperceptibly it began to recede, without once abandoning its gaze.

A wild shriek re-echoed through the high-vaulted dome of the Basilica of

St. Peter. It was the shriek of a madman, who has escaped his guards,

but fears to be overtaken. The golden chalice fell from Eckhardt's

nerveless grasp, spilling its contents over the feet of the Cardinal of

San Gregorio who raised his hands in unfeigned dismay and muttered an

anathema. Then, with a white, wet face, Eckhardt staggered blindly to

his feet, groping, with outstretched arms, toward the apparition--which

seemed to recede farther and farther away into the gloom.

The hush of death had fallen upon the assembly. The monk Cyprianus

raised aloft his arms, as though invoking divine interposition and

exorcising the fiend. His eyes, the eyes of the assembled thousands and

the stare of Benilo, the Chamberlain, followed the direction of

Eckhardt's outstretched arms. Suddenly he was seen to pause before one

of the massive pillars, pale as death, mumbling strange words,

accompanied by stranger gestures. Then he gazed about like one waking

from a terrible dream--the spot where the apparition had mocked him but

a moment ago was deserted! Had it been but another temptation of the

fiend?

But no! It was impossible. This woman had made him utterly her own;

her glance had sufficed to snap asunder the fetters of a self-imposed

yoke, as though her will, powerful even after death, had suddenly passed

upon him. Though he saw her not at the present moment, he had but to

close his eyes, to see her as distinctly as if she were still present in

the body. And in that moment Eckhardt felt all the horrors of the path

he was about to choose, the dead and terrible aspect of the life he was

about to espouse. To be a monk, to crawl till death in the chill shade

of the cloister, to see none save living spectres, to watch by the

nameless corpses of folks unknown, to wear his raiment for his coffin's

pall--a terrible dread seized him. One brief hour spent before an altar

and some gabbled words were about to cut him off for ever from the

society of the living. With his own hand he was about to seal the stone

upon his tomb, and turn the key in the lock of the door of Life.

Like a whirlwind these thoughts passed through Eckhardt's brain. Then

he imagined once more that he saw the eyes of his dead wife gazing upon

him, burning into the very depths of his soul. What made their aspect

so terrible to him, he was not just then in the frame to analyze. Some

mysterious force, which had left the sweetness of her face unmarred,

seemed to have imparted something to her eyes that inspired him with an

unaccountable dread.

As he paused thus before the pillar, pressing his icy hands to his

fevered temples, vainly groping for a solution, vainly endeavouring to

break the fetters which bound his will and seemed to crush his strength,

there broke upon his ears the loud command of the officiating monk, to

return and bid the Fiend desist. These words broke the deadly spell

which had benumbed his senses and caused him to remain riveted to the

spot, where the phantom had hovered. His sunken eyes glared as those of

a madman, as he slowly turned in response to the monk's behest. The hot

breath came panting from between his parched lips. Then, without

heeding the ceremony, without heeding the monks or the spectators who

had flocked hither to witness his consecration, Eckhardt dashed through

the circle of which he had formed the central figure and, ere the amazed

spectators knew what happened or the monks could stem his precipitate

flight, the chief of the imperial hosts rushed out of the church in his

robes of consecration and vanished from sight.

So quickly, so unexpectedly did it all happen, that even the officiating

Cardinal seemed completely paralyzed by the suddenness of Eckhardt's

flight. There was no doubt in the mind of Cyprianus that the Margrave

had gone mad and his whispered orders sent two monks speeding after the

demented neophyte. Deep, ominous silence hovered over the vast area of

the Basilica. It seemed as if the very air was fraught with deep

portent, and ominous forebodings of impending danger filled the hearts

of the assembled thousands. The people knelt in silent prayer and

breathless expectation. Would Eckhardt return? Would the ceremony

proceed?

Among all those, who had so eagerly watched the uncommon spectacle of

whose crowning glory they were about to see themselves deprived, there

was but one to whom the real cause of the scene which had just come to a

close, was no mystery. Benilo alone knew the cause of Eckhardt's flight.

To the last moment he had triumphed, convinced that no temptation could

turn from his chosen path a mind so stern as Eckhardt's. But when the

effect of the mysterious vision upon the kneeling general became

apparent, when his restlessness grew with every moment, up to the

terrible climax, accentuated by his madman's yell, when, unmindful of

the monk's admonition--he saw him rush out of the church in his

consecrated robes--then Benilo knew that the general would not return.

For the time all the insolent boastfulness of his nature forsook him and

he shivered as one seized with a sudden chill. Without awaiting what

was to come, unseen and unnoticed amidst the all-pervading

consternation, the Chamberlain rushed out of the Basilica by the same

door through which Eckhardt had gained the open.

Under his canopy sat the Vice-Gerent of Christ, surrounded by the

consecrated cardinals and bishops and the monks of the various orders.

Without an inkling of the true cause prompting Eckhardt's precipitate

flight Gregory had witnessed the terrible scene, which had just come to

a close. But inwardly he rejoiced. For only when every opposition to

Eckhardt's mad desire had appeared fruitless, had the Pontiff acquiesced

in granting to him the special dispensation, which shortened the time of

his novitiate to the limit of three days.

But it was not a matter for the moment, for Gregory himself was to

partake of the Communion and the monk Cyprianus, who was to perform the

holy office, a tribute to the order whose superior he was, had just

blessed the host. In his consecrated hand the wine was to turn into the

blood of Christ, Gregory had just partaken of the holy wafer. Now the

monk placed the golden tube in the golden chalice and, drawing his cowl

deeply over his forehead, passed the other end of the tube to the

Pontiff.

Gregory placed the golden tube to his lips, and as he sipped the wine,

changed into blood, the two cardinals on duty approached the sacred

throne, a torch in one hand, a small bundle of tow in the other.

According to custom they set the tow on fire.

Again the unison chant of the monks resounded; the assembled thousands

lying prostrate in prayer.

Suddenly there arose a strange bustle round the pontifical canopy.

Suppressed murmurs broke the silence. Monks were to be seen rushing

hither and thither. Gregory had fainted! The monk Cyprianus seemed

vainly endeavouring to revive him. For a moment the crowds remained in

awe-struck silence, then, as if the grim spectre of Death had visibly

appeared amongst them, the terror-stricken worshippers rushed out of the

Basilica of St. Peter and soon the terrible rumour was rife in the

streets of Rome. Pope Gregory the Fifth was dying.

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE DEATH WATCH*

The sun had sunk to rest and the noises of the day were dying out, one

by one. The deep hush of the hour of dusk settled once more over the

city, shaken to its very depths by the terrible catastrophe and upheaved

by the fanaticism of the monks, who roused the populace to a paroxysm of

frenzy and fear which gave way to pandemonium itself, when the feelings

of the masses, strung to their utmost tension, leaped into the opposite

extreme. Crescentius had remained shut up in Castel San Angelo, but the

monk Cyprianus could be seen stalking through the city at the hour of

dusk, and whosoever met him crossed himself devoutly, and prayed to have

time for confession, when the end was nigh.

The importance of the impending change impressed itself upon every mind.

The time when worldly power alone could hope to successfully cope with

the crying evils of a fast decaying age, of a world, grown old and stale

and rotten, upon which had not yet fallen the beam of the Renaissance,

was not yet at hand, and the fatal day of Canossa had not yet illumined

the century with its lurid glare.

Therefore Otto had chosen Bruno, the friend of his boyhood, for the

highest honours in Christendom, Bruno, one in mind, one in soul with

himself, and the Conclave had by its vote ratified the imperial choice.

But Bruno himself had not wished the honour. While he shared the high

ideals of his royal friend he lacked that confidence in himself, which

was so essential a requirement for the ruler whose throne swayed on the

storm-tossed billows of the Roman See. Bruno was of a rather

retrospective turn of mind, and it was doubtful, whether he would be

able to carry out the sweeping reforms planned by Theophano's idealistic

son, and regarded with secret abhorrence by the Italian cardinals. Only

with the aid of the venerable Gerbert had Gregory consented to enter

upon the grave duties awaiting him at the head of the Christian world at

a time when that world seemed to totter in its very foundations. And he

had paid the penalty, cut down in the prime of life.

In the Vatican chapel on a bier, round which were burning six wax

candles in silver-sticks, lay the fast decaying body of Gregory V.

Terrible rumours concerning the Pontiff's death were abroad in the city.

The doors of the Pope's private apartments had been found locked from

within. The terrified attendants had not ventured to return to the

Vatican until the gray morning light of the succeeding day broke behind

the crests of the Apennines. They had broken down the door, rumour had

it, but to recoil from the terrible sight which met their eyes. On his

bed lay the dead Pontiff. The head and right arm almost touched the

floor, as if in the death-struggle he had lost his balance. Traces of

burnt parchment on the floor and an empty phial on the table beside him

intensified, rather than cleared up the mystery. And as they

approached, terror-stricken, and endeavoured to lift the body, the right

arm almost severed itself from the trunk at their touch, and the body

was fast turning black. The handsome features of the youth were gray

and drawn, his hair clammy and dishevelled and the open eyes stared

frightfully into space as if vainly searching for the murderer.

Whatever Gerbert's suspicions were when, too late, he arrived in the

death chamber, no hint escaped his lips. Under his personal care the

body of the hapless youth was prepared for interment, then he hurriedly

convoked the Conclave and ordered the gates of Rome closed against any

one attempting to leave the city.

The Vatican chapel was hung with funereal tapestry. Everywhere were seen

garlands of flowers entwined with branches of cypress. In the middle of

the chapel stood the bier, covered with black velvet. A choir of monks,

robed in vestments of black damask, was chanting the last Requiem. The

Cardinal of Sienna was conducting the last rites. As the echoes of the

chant died away under the vaulted arches, a monk approached the bier,

and sprinkled the corpse with holy water. The Cardinal pronounced the

benediction; the monk bent slightly over the body when a drop from the

forehead of the dead Pontiff rebounded to his face. He shuddered and

hastily retreated behind the monks, who formed into the recessional.

Only two remained in the chapel. Contrary to all custom they

extinguished the candles which had burnt down half-way. The smaller

ones they left to flicker out, until they should pitifully flare up

once, more, then to go out in the great darkness like the soul of man,

when his hour has come.

The last and only one to remain within the chapel to hold the

death-watch with the Pontiff, was Eckhardt, the Margrave. Wrapt in his

dark fancies he sat beside the bier. After his precipitate flight all

memory of what succeeded had vanished. Exhausted and tottering he had

found himself in the palace on the Caelian Mount, where he shut himself

up till the terrible tidings of the Pontiff's death penetrated to the

solitude of his abode. Now it seemed to him that the moment he would

set foot in the streets of Rome, some dark and fearful revelation

awaited him. Since that night, when the strange apparition had drawn

him from the altars of Christ, had caused him to renounce the vows his

lips were about to pronounce, a terrible fear and suspicion had gripped

his soul. The presentiment of some awful mystery haunted him night and

day, as he brooded over the terrible fascination of those eyes, which

had laid their spell upon him, the amazing resemblance of the apparition

to the wife of his soul, long dead in her grave. And the more he

pondered the heavier grew his heart within him, and he groped in vain

for a ray of light on his dark and lonely path,--vainly for a guiding

hand, to conduct him from the labyrinth of doubt and fear into the

realms of oblivion and peace. The Margrave's senses reeled from the

heavy fumes of flowers and incense, which filled the Basilica. The

light from a cresset-lantern on the wall, contending singly with the

pale mournful rays of the moon, which cast a dim light through the long

casement, over pillars and aisles, fell athwart his pallid face. The

terrible incidents of the past night, which had thrown him back into the

throes of the world, and had snuffed out the Pontiff's life, weighed

heavily upon him, and for the nonce, the commander abandoned every

attempt to clear the terrible mystery which enshrouded him. He almost

despaired of combating the spectre single-handed, and now the one man,

who might by counsel and precept have guided his steps, had been struck

down by the assassin's hand.

The sanctity of the place, the solemnity of the hour, and the deep

silence around were well calculated to deepen the melancholy mood of the

solitary watcher. Weird were the fancies that swept over his mind,

memories of a long forgotten past, and dim, indistinct plans for the

future, till at length, wearied with his own reflections over that

saddest of all earthly enigmas, what might have been, he seated himself

on a low bench beside the bier. The moonbeams grew fainter and more

faint, as the time wore on, and the sharp distinction between light and

shadow faded fast from the marble floor.

Thicker and thicker drooped the shadows round the bier of the dead

Pontiff. The silence seemed to deepen. The moon was gone. Save for

the struggling rays of the cresset-lantern above him, the blackness of

night closed round the solemn and ghostly scene.

The scent of flowers and the fumes of incense weighed heavily on

Eckhardt's senses. Vainly did he combat the drowsiness; the silence,

the dim light and the heavy fumes at last laid their benumbing spell

upon him and lulled him to sleep. His head fell back and his eyes

closed.

But his sleep was far from calm. Weird dreams beset him. Again he lived

over the terrible ordeal of the preceding night. Again he saw himself

surrounded, hemmed in by a vast concourse. Again he saw the phantom at

the shrine, the phantom with Ginevra's face,--Ginevra's eyes; again he

heard her strange luring words. The wine spilled from the sacred

chalice looked like blood on the marble stairs of the altar. He heard

his own voice, strange, unearthly; gripped by a choking sensation he

rushed from the crowded Basilica, the air of which seemed to stifle

him,--rushed in pursuit of the phantom with Ginevra's face,--Ginevra's

eyes. At the threshold of the church a hand seized his own,--a woman's

hand. How long, since he had felt a woman's hand in his own! It was

cold as the skin of a serpent, yet it burnt like fire. And the hand

drew him onward, ever onward. There was no resisting the gaze of those

eyes which burnt into his own.

A deep azure overspread the sky. The trees were clothed in the raiment

of spring. Blindly he staggered onward. Blindly he followed his

strange guide through groves, fragrant with the perfumes of

flowers,--the air seemed as a bower of love. The hand drew him onward

with its chill, yet burning touch. The way seemed endless. Faster and

faster grew their speed. At last they seemed to devour the way. The

earth flitted beneath them as a gray shadow. The black trees fled in

the darkness like an army in rout. They delved into glens, gloomy and

chill. The night-birds clamoured in the forest deeps; will-o'-the-wisps

gleamed over stagnant pools and now and then the burning eyes of

spectres pierced the gloom, who lined a dark avenue in their nebulous

shrouds.

And the hand drew him onward--ever onward! Neither spoke. Neither

questioned. At last he found himself in a churchyard. The scent of

faded roses hovered on the air like the memory of a long-forgotten love.

They passed tombstone after tombstone, gray, crumbling, with defaced

inscriptions; the spectral light of the moon in its last quarter dimly

illumined their path till at last they reached a stone half hidden

behind tall weeds and covered with ivy, moss and lichen. The earth had

been thrown up from the grave, which yawned to receive its inmate. Owls

and bats flocked and flapped about them with strange cries; the foxes

barked their answer far away and a thousand evil sounds rose from the

stillness. As they paused before the yawning grave he gazed up into his

companion's face. Pale as marble Ginevra stood by his side, the long

white shroud flowing unbroken to her feet. Through the smile of her

parted lips gleamed her white teeth, as she pointed downward, to the

narrow berth, then her arms encircled his neck like rings of steel; her

eyes seemed to pierce his own, he felt unable to breathe, he felt his

strength giving way, together they were sinking into the night of the

grave--

A shrill cry resounded through the silence of the Basilica. Awakened by

the terrible oppression of his dream,--roused by the sound of his own

voice, Eckhardt opened his eyes and gazed about, fearstruck and

dismayed. After a moment or two he arose, to shake off the spell, which

had laid its benumbing touch upon him, when he suddenly recoiled, then

stood rooted to the spot with wild, dilated eyes. At the foot of the

Pontiff's bier stood the tall form of a woman. The fitful rays of the

cresset-lantern above him illumined her white, flowing garb. A white

transparent veil drooped from her head to her feet; but the diaphanous

texture revealed a face pale and beautiful, and eyes which held him

enthralled with their slumbrous, mesmeric spell. Breathless with horror

Eckhardt gazed upon the apparition; was it but the continuation of his

dream or was he going mad?

As the phantom slowly began to recede into the shadows, Eckhardt with a

supreme effort shook off the lethargy which benumbed his limbs. He

dared remain no longer inert, he must penetrate the mystery, whatever

the cost, whatever the risk. With imploring, outstretched arms he

staggered after the apparition,--if apparition indeed it was,--straining

his gaze towards her slowly receding form--and so absorbed was he in his

pursuit, that he saw not the shadow which glided into the mortuary

chapel. Suddenly some dark object hurled itself against him; quick as a

flash, and ere he could draw a second breath, a dagger gleamed before

Eckhardt's eyes; he felt the contact of steel with his iron

breast-plate, he heard the weapon snap asunder and fall at his feet, but

when he recovered from his surprise, the would-be assassin, without

risking a second stroke, had fled and the apparition seemed to have

melted into air. Eckhardt found himself alone with the dead body of the

Pontiff.

With loud voice he called for the sentry, stationed without, and when

that worthy at last made his appearance, his heavy, drooping eyelids and

his drowsy gait did not argue in favour of too great a watchfulness.

Making the sentry doff his heavy iron shoes, Eckhardt bade him secure a

torch, then he made the round of the chapel, preceded by his stolid

companion. The Margrave's anxiety found slight reflex in the coarse

features of his subordinate, who understood just enough of what was

wanted of him to comprehend the disappointment in his master's

countenance. As every door was locked and bolted, the only supposition

remaining was that the bravo had discovered some outlet from within.

But Eckhardt's tests proved unavailing. The floor and the walls seemed

of solid masonry which to penetrate seemed impossible. The broken blade

offered no clue either to the author or perpetrator of this deed of

darkness, and after commanding the sentry to keep his watch for the

remainder of the night, inside, Eckhardt endeavoured once more to

compose himself to rest, while the man-at-arms stretched his huge limbs

before the pontifical bier.

The bells of St. Peter's chimed shrill and loud as a mighty multitude,

greater even than that of the preceding night, swept within its portals

toward the chapel of Boniface VIII. There, filling every inch of space,

only the more fortunate of the crowd gained a glimpse of the coffin,

which had been closed, for the corpse was decaying fast, the effect of

the terrible and mysterious poison which had been mixed in the holy

wine. At length, as the solemn chant of the choristers began to swell

through the edifice, preluding the celebration of the Death Mass for the

departed Pontiff, a silence as of the tomb pervaded the vast edifice.

Thus the day wore on,--thus the day departed.

The solemn chant had died away. The sun of another day had set.

The funeral cortege set in motion. Fifty torches surrounded the bier

and so numerous were the lamps in the windows of the streets through

which the funeral procession passed, so abundant the showers of roses

which poured upon the bier, that the people declared it surpassed the

procession Corpus Domini.

Interchanging solemn hymns, the cortege arrived at last before the

church of San Pietro in Montorio, where the body was to be placed in the

niche provisionally appointed, where it was to remain till the death of

the succeeding pope should consign it to its final place of rest.

The ceremony ended, the people dispersed. Few loiterers remained on the

pavement of the church. The sacristan announced that it was about to be

closed, and waiting until, as he thought, all had departed, he turned

the ponderous doors on their hinges and shut them with a crash. The

report, reverberating from arch to arch, shook the ancient sepulchre

through its every angle. The lamps, which at wide intervals burned

feebly before the shrines of the saints, lent additional solemnity and

awe to the obscurity of the place. One torch was left to light a narrow

circle round the entrance to the crypt.

Silence had succeeded when out of the shadow of the tomb there passed

two figures, who upon entering the narrow circle of light emanating from

the dim, flickering taper, faced each other in mute amazement and

surprise.

"What are you doing here?" spoke the one, in the garb of a monk, as they

stood revealed to each other in the half gloom.

With a gesture of horror and dismay the other, a woman, wrapt in a dark

mantle, which covered her tall and stately form from head to foot,

turned away from him.

"I give you back the question," she replied, dread and fear in her

tones.

"My presence here concerns the dead," said the monk.

"They say, the hand of the dead Pontiff has touched his murderer."

The monk paled. For a moment he almost lost his self-control.

"He had to die some way," he replied with a shrug.

"Monster!" she exclaimed, recoiling from him, as if she had seen a snake

in her path.

"He travelled in godly company," said the monk Cyprianus with a dark

laugh. "An entire Conclave will welcome him at the gates of Paradise.

Why are you here?" the monk concluded, a shade of suspicion lingering in

his tones.

"Am I accountable to you?" flashed Theodora.

"Being what you are through my intercession,--perhaps," replied the

monk.

She measured him with a look of unutterable contempt.

"Because the prying eyes of a perjured wretch, who screened his vileness

behind the cassock of the monk, dared to offend the majesty of Death and

to disturb the repose of the departed, you come to me like some

importunate slave dissatisfied with his hire? You dare to constitute

yourself my guardian, to call Theodora a thing of your creation? Take

care! You speak to a descendant of Marozia. I have had enough of

whimpering monks. For the service demanded of you in a certain hour you

have been paid. So clear the way, and trouble me no more!"

The monk did not stir.

"The fair Theodora has not inherited Ginevra's memory," he said with a

sneer. "The gold was to purchase the repose of Ginevra's soul."

Theodora shuddered, as if oppressed with the memories of the past.

"Candles and masses," she said, as one soliloquizing. "How signally

they failed!"

The monk shrugged his shoulders.

"If a thousand Aves, and tapers six foot long fail in their

purpose,--what undiscovered penance could perform the miracle?"

There was something in the gleam of the monk's eye which brought

Theodora to herself.

"What do you want of me?" she questioned curtly.

"The fulfilment of your pledge."

"You have been paid."

The monk waved his hands.

"'Tis not for gold, I have ventured this--"

And he pointed to the crypts below.

She recoiled from him, regarding him with a fixed stare.

"What do you want of me?" she again asked with a look, in which hate and

wonder struggled for the mastery.

"The new Conclave will be made up of your creatures. Their choice must

fall--on me!"

"On the perjured assassin?" shrieked the woman. "Out of my way! I've

done with you!"

The monk stirred not. From his drawn white face two eyes like glowing

coals burnt into those of the woman.

"Remember your pledge!"

"Out of my way, assassin! Dare you so high? The chair of St. Peter

shall never be defiled by such a one--as you!"

"And thus Theodora rewards the service rendered to Ginevra," the monk

said, breathing hard, and making a step towards her. She watched him

narrowly, her hand concealed under her cloak.

"Dare but to touch the hem of this robe with your blood-stained hands--"

Cyprianus retreated before the menace in her eyes.

"I thought I had lived too long for surprises," he said calmly. "Yet,

considering that I bear here in this bosom a secret, which one, I know,

would give an empire to obtain,--Cyprianus can be found tractable."

With a last glance at the woman's face, stony in its marble-cold

disdain, the monk turned and left the church through the sacristy. For

a moment Theodora remained as one spell-bound, then she drew her mantle

more closely about her and left the sepulchre by an exit situated in an

opposite direction. No sooner had her footsteps died to silence when

two shadowy forms sped noiselessly through the incense-saturated dusk of

S. Pietro in Montorio, pausing on the threshold of the door, through

which the monk Cyprianus had gained the open.

"I need that man!" whispered the taller into the ear of his companion,

pointing with shadowy finger to the swiftly vanishing form of the monk.

The other nodded with a horrid grin, which glowed upon his visage like

phosphorus upon a skull.

With a quick nod of understanding, the Grand Chamberlain and John of the

Catacombs quitted the steps of S. Pietro in Montorio.

Darkness fell.

Night enveloped the trembling world with her star embroidered robe of

dark azure.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE CONCLAVE*

A vast concourse surrounded the portals of the Vatican. It seemed as if

the entire population of Rome, from the Porta del Popolo to the

Coliseum, from the baths of Diocletian to Castel San Angelo, had

assembled by appointment in the Piazza of St. Peter. For so dense was

the multitude, that its pressure filled the adjacent thoroughfares, the

crowds clinging round columns, winding along the broken outlines of the

walls, and grouping themselves among the ruins of temples and fallen

porticoes.

The eyes of all were fixed upon that wing of the pontifical palace where

the Conclave, hurriedly convoked, was assembled, and as Gregory V had

now been dead sixteen days, the cardinals were proceeding with the

election of a new Pope. Never possibly, from the hour when the first

successor of St. Peter mounted the throne of the Apostle, had there been

exhibited so much unrest and disquietude as there was in this instance

to be observed among the masses. The rumour that Gregory had died of

poison had proved true, and the Romans had been seized with a strange

fear, urging all ranks towards the Vatican or Monte Cavallo, according

as the scarlet assembly held its sittings in one place or another.

During the temporary interregnum, the Cardinal of Sienna, president of

the Apostolic Chamber, had assumed the pontifical authority.

For three days the eyes of the Romans had been fixed upon a chimney in

the Vatican, whence the first signal should issue, proclaiming the

result of the pending election. Yet at the hour when the Ave Maria

announced the close of day, a small column of smoke, ascending like a

fleecy cloud of vapour to the sky, had been the only reward for their

anxiety, and with cries mingled with shouts of menace, discordant

murmurs of raillery and laughter the crowds had each day dispersed. For

the smoke announced that the Romans were still without a Pontiff, that

the ballot-list had been burnt, and that the Sacred College had not yet

chosen a successor to Gregory.

The day had been spent in anxious expectation. Hour passed after hour,

without a sign either to destroy or to excite the hope, when the first

stroke of five was heard. Slowly the bells tolled the hour, every note

falling on the hearts of the people, whose anxious gaze was fixed on the

chimney of the Vatican. The last stroke sounded; its vibrations faintly

fading on the silent air of dusk, when a thunderous clamour, echoing

from thousands of throats, shook the Piazza of St. Peter, succeeded by a

death-like silence of expectation as with a voice, loud and penetrating,

Cardinal Colonna, who had stepped out upon the balcony, announced to the

breathless thousands:

"I announce to you tidings of great joy: Gerbert of Aurillac, Archbishop

of Rheims, Bishop of Ravenna and Vice-Chancellor of the Church, has been

elected to the exalted office of Pontiff and has ascended the chair of

St. Peter under the name of Sylvester II."

As the Cardinal finished his announcement a monk in the grey habit of

the Penitent friars was seen to pale and to totter, as if he were about

to fall. Declining the aid of those endeavouring to assist him he

staggered through the crowds, covering his face with his arms and was

soon lost to sight.

The thunderous applause at the welcome tidings was followed by sighs of

relief, as the people retired to their houses and hovels. The place,

where a few minutes before a nation seemed collected, was again

deserted, save for a few groups, composed of such whom curiosity might

detain or others who, residing in the immediate neighbourhood, were less

eager to depart. Even these imperceptibly diminished, and when the hour

of eight was repeated from cloisters and convents, the lights in the

houses gradually disappeared, save in one window of the Vatican, whence

a lamp still shed its fitful light through the nocturnal gloom.

*Book the Second*

*The Sorceress*

"As I came through the desert, thus it was

As I came through the desert: I was twain;

Two selves distinct, that cannot join again.

One stood apart and knew but could not stir,

And watched the other stark in swoon and her;

And she came on and never turned aside,

Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:

And as she came more near,

My soul grew mad with fear."

--_James Thomson_.

*CHAPTER I*

*THE MEETING*

Not many days after, in the still noontide of mellow autumn, a small

band of horsemen drew towards Rome. They rode along the Via Appia,

between the ancient tombs; all about them, undulant to the far horizon,

stretched a brown wilderness dotted with ruins. Ruins of villas, of

farms, of temples, with here and there a church or a monastery, that

told of the newer time. Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a

speck of tilled soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and

awful silence, but rarely did a human figure meet the eye. Marshy ground

and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing them to glance sadly at

those great aqueducts, which had in bygone ages carried water from the

hills into Rome.

They rode in silence, tired with their journey, occupied with heavy or

anxious thoughts. Otto, King of the Germans, impatient to arrive, was

generally a little ahead of the rest of the company. The pallor of his

smooth and classic face was enhanced by the coarse military cloak, dark

and travel-stained, which covered his imperial vestments. A lingering

expression of sadness was revealed in his eyes, and his lips were

tightly compressed in wordless grief, for the tidings of the untimely

death of the Pontiff, the friend of his youth and his boyhood days, had

reached him just after his departure from the shrines of St. Michael in

Apulia. Dark hints had been contained in the message, which Sylvester

II, Gregory's chosen successor and Otto's former teacher, had despatched

to the ruler of the Roman world, urging his immediate return,--for the

temper of the Romans brooked no trifling, their leaders being ever on

the alert for mischief.

Earthworks and buildings of military purpose presently appeared,

recalling the late blockade; churches and oratories told them they were

passing the sacred ground of the Catacombs, then they trotted along a

hollow way and saw before them the Appian gate. Only two soldiers were

on guard; these, not recognizing the German king, took a careless view

of the travellers, then let them pass without speaking.

At the base of the Aventine the cavalcade somewhat slackened its pace.

Slowly they ascended the winding road, until they reached the old wall

of Servius Tullius. Here Otto reined in his charger, pausing, for a

moment, to observe the view. To the west and south-west stretched the

brown expanse of the Campagna, merging into the distant gray of the

Roman Maremma, while beyond that point a clear blue line marked the

Ionian Sea. Beneath them the Tiber wound its coils round St.

Bartholomew's Island, the yellow water of the river, stirred into faint

ripples by the breeze, looking from the distance like hammered brass.

Beyond the Tiber rose the Janiculan Mount, behind which the top of the

Vatican hill was just visible. To southward the view was bounded by the

Church of Santa Prisca above them and far off rose the snow-capped cone

of Soracte. Northeast and east lay the Palatine and Esquiline with the

Campaniles of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Pietro in Vincoli. Over the

Caelian Mount they could see the heights of the Sabine hills, and

running their eyes along the Appian way, they could almost descry the

Alban lake. At a sign from their sovereign the cavalcade slowly set in

motion. Passing the monastery of St. Jerome and its dependencies, the

three churches of the Aventine, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria Aventina and

St. Alexius, the imperial cavalcade at last drew rein before the gates

of Otto's Golden Palace on the Aventine.

Again in his beloved Rome, Otto's first visit was to Bruno's grave. He

had dismissed his attendants, wishing to be alone in his hour of grief.

Long he knelt in tears and silent prayers before the spot, which seemed

to contain half his young life, then he directed his steps towards the

Basilica of St. Peter, there to conclude his devotions.

It was now the hour of Vespers.

The area of St. Peters was filled with a vast and silent crowd, flowing

in and out of the Confessor's station, which was in the subterranean

chapel, that contains the Apostle's tomb, the very lode-stone of

devotion throughout the Christian word.

After having finished his devotions, Otto was seized with the desire to

seek the confessor, in order to obtain relief from the strange

oppression which hovered over him like a presentiment of evil. Taking

his station in line with a number of penitents, in the dusky passage

leading to the confessional, the scene within was now and then revealed

to his gaze for the short space of a moment, when the bronze gates

opened for the entrance or exit of some heavily burdened sinner. The

tomb was stripped of all its costly ornaments, and lighted only by the

torches of some monks, whose office it was to interpret the

Penitentiarius, whenever occasion arose. These torches shed a mournful

glow over the dusk, suiting the place of sepulchre of martyred saints.

On the tomb itself stood an urn of black marble, beneath which was an

alabaster tablet, on which was engraved the prophecy concerning the

Millennium and the second coming of Christ, and the conditions of

penance and prayer, which were to enable the faithful to share in and

obtain its benefits. Only now and then, when the curtain waved aside,

the person of the Grand Penitentiarius became visible, his hands rigidly

clasped, and his usually pale and stern visage overspread with even a

darker haze of its habitual gloom.

While Otto was anxiously waiting his turn to be admitted to the presence

of the Confessor, the gates of the confessional suddenly swung open and

a woman glided out. She was closely veiled and in his mental absorption

Otto might scarcely have noticed her at all, but for the singular

intensity of the gaze, with which the monk followed her retreating form.

As she passed the German King in the narrow passage, her veil became

entangled and she paused to adjust it. As she did so, her features were

for the brief space of a moment revealed to Otto, and with such an air

of bewilderment did he stare at her, that she almost unconsciously

raised her eyes to his. For a moment both faced each other, motionless,

eye in eye--then the woman quickened her steps and hastened out. After

she had disappeared, Otto touched his forehead like one waking from a

trance. Never, even in this city of beautiful women, had he seen the

like of her, never had his eyes met such perfection, such exquisite

beauty and loveliness. She combined the stately majesty of a Juno with

the seductive charms of Aphrodite. In dark ringlets the silken hair

caressed the oval of her exquisite face, a face of the soft tint of

Parian marble, and the dark lustrous eyes gave life to the classic

features of this Goddess of Mediaeval Rome. Before she vanished from

sight, the woman, seemingly obeying an impulse not her own, turned her

head in the direction of Otto. This was due perhaps to the strange

discrepancy between his face and his attire, or to the presence of one

so young and of appearance so distinguished among the throngs which

habitually crowded the confessional.

How long he stood thus entranced, Otto knew not, nor did he heed the

curious gaze of those who passed him on entering and leaving the

confessional. At last he roused himself, and, oblivious of his station

and rank, flew down the dark, vaulted passage at such a speed as almost

to knock down those who encountered him in his headlong pursuit of the

fair confessionist. It was more than a matter of idle curiosity to him

to discover, if possible, her station and name, and after having

attracted to himself much unwelcome attention by his rash and

precipitate act, he gradually fell into a slower pace. He reached the

end of the dark passage in time to see what he believed to be her

retreating form vanish down a corridor and disappear in one of the

numerous side-chapels. Concluding that she had entered to perform some

special devotion, he resolved to await her return.

Considerable time elapsed. At last, growing impatient, Otto entered the

chapel. He found it draped throughout with black, an altar in the

center, dimly illumined. Some monks were chanting a Requiem, and before

the altar there knelt a veiled woman, apparently under the spell of some

deep emotion, for Otto heard her sob when she attempted to articulate

the responses to the solemn and pathetic litany, which the Catholic

church consecrates to her dead.

But the German King's observation suffered an immediate check.

A verger came forward on those soundless shoes, which all vergers seem

to have, and little guessing the person or quality of the intruder

informed him of the woman's desire, that none should be admitted during

the celebration of the mass. Otto stared his informant in the face, as

if he were at a loss to comprehend his meaning, and the latter repeated

his request somewhat more slowly, under the impression that the

stranger's seeming lack of understanding was due to his unfamiliarity

with the speaker's barbarous jargon.

Otto slowly retreated and deferring his intended visit to the chapel of

the Confessor to an hour more opportune, left the Basilica. As he

recalled to himself, trace after trace, line upon line, that exquisite

face, whose creamy pallor was enhanced by the dark silken wealth of her

hair, and from whose perfect oval two eyes had looked into his own,

which had caused his heart-beats to stop and his brain to whirl, he

could hardly await the moment when he should learn her name, and perhaps

be favoured with the assurance that her visit on that evening was not

likely to have been her last to the Confessor's shrine.

Imbued with this hope, he slowly traversed the streets of Rome,

experiencing a restful, even animating contentment in breathing once

more the atmosphere of the thronging city, of being once more in a great

center of humanity. At a familiar corner sat an old man with an iron

tripod, over which, by a slow fire, he roasted his chestnuts, a sight

well remembered, for often had he passed him. He threw him some coins

and continued upon his way. Beyond, at his shop-door stood a baker,

deep in altercation with his patrons. From an alley came a wine-vender

with his heavy terra-cotta jars. Before an osteria a group of pifferari

piped their pastoral strains. A few women of the sturdy, low-browed

Contadini-type hastened, basket-laden, homeward. A patrol of

men-at-arms marched down the Navona, while up a narrow tortuous lane

flitted a company of white-robed monks, bearing to some death-bed the

last consolation of the church.

Otto had partaken of no food since morning and nature began to assert

her rights. Finding himself at the doorway of an inn for wayfarers,

with a pretentious coat-of-arms over the entrance, he entered

unceremoniously, and seated himself apart from the rather questionable

company which patronized the Inn of the Mermaid. Here the landlord, a

burly Calabrian, served his unknown guest with a most questionable

beverage, faintly suggestive of the product of the vintage, and viands

so strongly seasoned that they might have undertaken a pilgrimage on

their own account.

For these commodities, making due allowance for his guest's abstracted

state of mind, the uncertainty of the times and the crowded state of the

city, the host of the Mermaid only demanded a sum equal to five times

the customary charge, which Otto paid without remonstrance, whereupon

the worthy host of the Mermaid called to witness all the saints of the

calendar, that he deserved to spend the remainder of his life in a

pig-sty, for having been so moderate in his reckoning.

As one walking in a dream, Otto returned to his palace on the Aventine.

Had he wavered in the morning, had the dictates of reason still ventured

to assert themselves--the past hour had silenced them for ever. Before

his gaze floated the image of her who had passed him in the Basilica.

At the thought of her he could hear the beating of his own heart.

Rome--the dominion of the earth--with that one to share it--delirium of

ecstasy! Would it ever be realized! Then indeed the dream of an

earthly paradise would be no mere fable!

*CHAPTER II*

*THE QUEEN OF NIGHT*

A week had passed since Otto's arrival in Rome. Eckhardt, wrapped in

his own dark fancies, had only appeared at the palace on the Aventine

when compelled to do so in the course of his newly resumed duties. The

terrible presentiment which had haunted him night and day since he left

the gray, bleak winter skies of his native land, had become intensified

during the past days. Day and night he brooded over the terrible

fascination of those eyes which had laid their spell upon him, over the

amazing resemblance of the apparition to the one long dead in her grave.

And the more he pondered the heavier grew his heart within him, and

vainly he groped for a ray of light upon his dark and lonely path,

vainly for a guiding hand to conduct him from the labyrinth of doubt and

fear.

It had been a warm and sultry day. Towards evening dark clouds had

risen over the Tyrrhene Sea and spread in long heavy banks across the

azure of the sky. Sudden squalls of rain swept down at short intervals,

driving the people into shelter. All the life of the streets took

refuge in arcades or within dimly lighted churches. Soon the slippery

marble pavements were deserted, and the water from the guttered roofs

dripped dolefully into overflowing cisterns. A strange atmosphere of

discomfort and apprehension lay over the city.

The storm increased as evening fell. From the seclusion of the gloomy

chamber he occupied in the old weather-beaten palace of the Pierleoni,

Eckhardt looked out into the growing darkness. The clouds chased each

other wildly and the driving rain obliterated every outline.

How long he had thus stood, he did not know. A rattle of hailstones

against the window, a gust of wind, which suddenly blew into his face,

and the lurid glare of lightning which flashed through the

ever-deepening cloud-bank, roused Eckhardt from his reverie to a sense

of reality. The lamp on the table shed a fitful glare over the

surrounding objects. Now the deep boom of thunder reverberating through

the hills caused him to start from his listless attitude. Just as he

turned, the lamp gave a dismal crackle and went out, leaving him in

Stygian gloom. With an exclamation less reverent than expressive,

Eckhardt groped his way through the darkness, vainly endeavouring to

find a flint-stone. A flash of lightning which came to his aid not only

revealed to him the desired object, but likewise a tall, shadowy form

standing on the threshold. From the dense obscurity which enshrouded

him, Eckhardt could not, in the intermittent flashes of lightning, see

the stranger's features, but a singular, and even to himself quite

inexplicable perversity of humour, kept him silent and unwilling to

declare his presence, although he instinctively felt that the strange

visitor, whoever he was, had seen him. Meanwhile the latter advanced a

pace or two, paused, peered through the gloom and spoke with a voice

strangely blended with deference and irony:

"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"

Without once taking his eyes from the individual, whose dark form now

stood clearly revealed in the lightning flashes, which followed each

other at shorter intervals, the same strange obstinacy stiffened

Eckhardt's tongue, and concealed in the gloom, he still held his peace.

But the stranger drew nearer, till in height and breadth he seemed

suddenly to overshadow the Margrave, and once again the voice spoke:

"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"

"I am here!" the latter replied curtly, rising out of the darkness, and

striking the flint-stones, he succeeded, after some vain efforts, in

relighting the lamp. As he did so, a tremendous peal of thunder shook

the house and the stranger precipitately retreated into the shadow of

the doorway.

"You are the bearer of a message?" Eckhardt turned towards him, with

unsteady voice. The stranger made no move to deliver what the other

seemed to expect.

"Everything in death has its counterpart in life," he replied with a

calm, passionless voice which, by its very absence of inflection,

thrilled Eckhardt strangely. "If you have the courage--follow me!"

Without a word the Margrave placed upon his head a skullcap of linked

mail, and after having adjusted his armour, turned to the mysterious

messenger.

"Who bade you speak those words?"

"One you have seen before."

"Where?"

"Your memory will tell you."

"Her name?"

"You will hear it from her own lips."

"Where will you lead me?"

"Follow me and you will see."

"Why do you conceal your face?"

"To hide the blush for the thing called man."

The stranger's enigmatic reply added to Eckhardt's conviction that this

night of all was destined to clear the mystery which enshrouded his

life.

A mighty struggle, such as he had never before known, seemed to rend his

soul, as with throbbing heart he followed his strange guide on his

mysterious errand. Thus they sped through the storm-swept city without

meeting one single human being. At the top of the Esquiline they came

to a momentary standstill, for the storm raged with a force that nothing

could resist. Leaning for a moment against a ruined portico, Eckhardt

gazed westward over the night-wrapt city. In the driving rain he could

scarcely distinguish the huge structures of the Flavian Amphitheatre and

the palaces on the Capitoline hill. The Janiculan Mount stood out like

a darker storm-cloud against the lowering sky, and the air was filled

with a dull moan and murmur like the breathing of a sleeping giant. On

the southern slope of the hill the wind attacked them with renewed fury,

and the blasts howled up the Clivus Martis and the Appian Way. The

region seemed completely deserted. Only a solitary travelling chariot

rolled now and then, clattering, over the stones.

The road gradually turned off to the right. The dark mass to their left

was the tomb of the Scipios and there in front, hardly visible in the

darkness of night, rose the arch of Drusus, through which their way led

them. Eckhardt took care to note every landmark which he passed, to

find the way, should occasion arise, without his guide. The latter,

constantly preceding him, took no note of the Margrave's scrutiny, but

continued unequivocally upon his way, leaving it to Eckhardt to follow

him, or not.

A blinding flash of lightning illumined the landscape far away to the

aqueducts and the Alban hills, followed by a deafening peal of thunder.

The uproar of the elements for a time shook Eckhardt's resolution.

Just then he heard the clanging of a gate.

An intoxicating perfume of roses and oleander wooed his bewildered

senses as his guide conducted him through a labyrinthine maze of winding

paths. Only an occasional gleam of lightning revealed to the Margrave

that they traversed a garden of considerable extent. Now the shadowy

outlines of a vast structure, illumined in some parts, appeared beyond

the dark cypress avenue down which they strode at a rapid pace.

Suddenly Eckhardt paused, addressing his guide: "Where am I, and why am

I here?"

The stranger turned, regarding him intently. Then he replied:

"I have nothing to add to my errand. If you fear to follow me, there is

yet time to retreat."

Had he played upon a point less sensitive, Eckhardt might have turned

his back even now upon the groves, whose whispering gloom was to him

more terrible than the din of battle, and whose mysterious perfumes

exercised an almost bewildering effect upon his overwrought senses.

A moment's deliberation only and Eckhardt replied:

"Lead on! I follow!"

He was now resolved to penetrate at every hazard the mystery which

mocked his life, his waking hours and his dreams.

On they walked.

Here and there, from branch-shadowed thickets gleamed the stone-face of

a sphinx or the white column of an obelisk, illumined by the lightnings

that shot through the limitless depth of the midnight sky. The storm

rustled among the arched branches, driving the dead and dying leaves in

a mad whirl through the wooded labyrinth.

At last, Eckhardt's strange guide stopped before a cypress hedge of

great height, which loomed black in the night, and penetrating through

an opening scarce wide enough for one man, beckoned to Eckhardt to

follow him. As the latter did so he stared in breathless bewilderment

upon the scene which unfolded itself to his gaze.

The cypress hedge formed the entrance to a grotto, the interior of which

was faintly lighted by a crystal lamp of tenderest rose lustre.

For a moment Eckhardt paused where he stood, then he touched his head

with both hands, as if wondering if he were dreaming or awake. If it

was not the work of sorcery, if he was not the victim of some strange

hallucination, if it was not indeed a miracle--what was it? He gazed

round, awe-struck, bewildered. His guide had disappeared.

The denizen of the grotto, a woman reclining on a divan, like a goddess

receiving the homage of her worshippers, was the image of the one who

had gone from him for ever, and the longer his gaze was riveted on this

enchanting counterfeit of Ginevra, the more his blood began to seethe

and his senses to reel.

Slowly he moved toward the enchantress, who from her half-reclining

position fixed her eyes in a long and questioning gaze upon the

new-comer, a gaze which thrilled him through and through. He dared not

look into those eyes, which he felt burning into his. His head was

beginning to spin and his heart to beat with a strange sensation of

wonderment and fear. Never till this hour had he seen Ginevra's equal in

beauty, and now that it broke on his vision, it was with the face, the

form, the hair, the eyes, the hands, of the woman so passionately loved.

Only the face was more pale--even with the pallor of death, and there

was something in the depths of those eyes which he had never seen in

Ginevra's. But the light, the perfume, the place and the seductive

beauty of the woman before him, garbed as she was in a filmy,

transparent robe of silvery tissue, which clung like a pale mist about

the voluptuous curves of her body, flowing round her like the glistening

waves of a cascade, began to play havoc with his senses.

"Welcome, stranger, in the Groves of Enchantment," she spoke, waving her

beautiful snowy arms toward her visitor. "I rejoice to see that your

courage deserves the welcome."

There was an undercurrent of laughter in her musical tones, as she

pointed to a seat by her side. Unable to answer, unable to resist,

Eckhardt moved a few paces nearer. His brain whirled. For a moment

Ginevra's image seemed forgotten in the contemplation of the rival of

her dead beauty. A wild, desperate longing seized him. On a sudden

impulse he turned away, in a dizzy effort to escape from the mesmeric

gleam of those sombre, haunting eyes, which pierced the very depths of

his soul. Fascinated, at the same time repelled, his very soul yearned

for her whose embrace he knew was destruction and he was filled with a

strange sudden fear. There was something terrible in the steadfast

contemplation which the woman bestowed upon him,--something that seemed

to lie outside the pale of human passions, and the pallor of her

exquisite face seemed to increase in proportion as the devouring fire of

her eyes burnt more intensely.

"Are you afraid of me?" she laughed, raising her arms and holding them

out toward him.

Still he hesitated. His breast heaved madly as his eyes met those,

which swam in a soft languor, strangely intoxicating. Her lips parted in

a faint sigh.

"Eckhardt," she said tremulously, "Eckhardt."

Then she paused as if to watch the effect of her words upon him.

Mute, oppressed by indistinct hovering memories, Eckhardt fed his gaze

on her seductive fairness, but a terrible pain and anguish gnawed at his

heart. Not only the face, even the voice was that of Ginevra.

"Everything in death has its counterpart in life:"--

That had been the pass-word to her presence.

One devouring look--and forgetting all fear and warning and all presence

of mind he rushed towards that flashing danger-signal of beauty, that

seemed to burn the very air encompassing it, that living image of his

dead wife, and with wild eyes, outstretched arms and breathless

utterance, he cried: "Ginevra!"

She whom he thus called turned toward him, as he came with the air of a

madman upon her, and her marvellous loveliness, as she raised her dark

eyes questioningly to his, checked his impetuous haste, held him

tongue-tied, bewildered and unmanned.

And truly, nothing more beautiful in the shape of woman could be

imagined than she. Her fairness was of that rare and subtle type which

has in all ages overwhelmed reason, blinded judgment and played havoc

with the passions of men.

Well did she know her own surpassing charm and thoroughly did she

estimate the value of her fatal power to lure and to madden and to

torture all whom she chose to make the victim of her almost resistless

attraction. Her hair, black as night, was arranged loosely under a

jewelled coif. Her eyes, large and brilliant, shone from under brows

delicately arched. Her satin skin was of the creamy, colourless,

Southern type, in startling contrast to the brilliant scarlet of the

small bewitching mouth.

Beautiful and delicate as the ensemble was, there was in that enchanting

face a lingering expression, which a woman would have hated and a man

would have feared.

"Ginevra!" Eckhardt cried, then he checked himself, for, her large eyes,

suddenly cold as the inner silence of the sea, surveyed him freezingly,

as though he were some insolently obtrusive stranger. But her face was

pale as that of a corpse.

"Ginevra!" he faltered for the third time, his senses reeling and he no

longer master of himself. "Surely you know me--Eckhardt,--him whose

name you have just called! Speak to me, Ginevra--speak! By all the

love I have borne for you--speak, Ginevra,--speak!"

A shadow flitted through the background and paused behind Theodora's

couch. Neither had seen it, though Theodora shuddered as if she had

felt the strange presence of something uncalled, unbidden.

A strange light of mockery, or of annoyance, gleamed in the woman's

eyes. Her crimson lips parted, showing two rows of even, small white

teeth, then a gleam of amusement shot athwart her face, raising the

delicately pencilled corners of the eye-brows, as she broke into a soft

peal of careless mocking laughter.

"I am not Ginevra," she said. "Who is Ginevra? I am Theodora--the

Queen of Love."

Again, as she saw his puzzled look, she gave way to her silvery, mocking

mirth, while her eyes flung him a glittering challenge to approach.

Eckhardt had recovered partial control over his feelings and met her

taunting gaze steadfastly and with something of sadness. His face had

grown very pale and all the warmth and rapture had died out of his

voice, when he spoke again.

"I am Eckhardt," he said quietly, with the calm of a madman who argues

for a fixed idea,--"and you are Ginevra--or her ghost--I know not which.

Why did you return to the world from your cold and narrow bed in the

earth and shun the man who worships you as one worships an idol? Is it

for some transgression in the flesh that your soul cannot find rest?"

An ominous shuffling behind her caused Theodora to start. She turned her

head as if by chance and when again she faced Eckhardt, she was as pale

as death. Noting her momentary embarrassment, Eckhardt made a resolute

step toward her, catching her hands in his own. He was dazed.

"Is this your welcome back in the world, Ginevra?" he pleaded with a

passionate whisper. "Have you no thought what this long misery apart

from you has meant? Remember the old days,--the old love,--have

pity--speak to me as of old."

His voice in its very whisper thrilled with the strange music that love

alone can give. His eyes burnt and his lips quivered. Suddenly he

seemed to wake to a realization of the scene. He had been mocked by a

fatal resemblance to his dead wife. His heart was heavy with the

certainty, but the spell remained.

Without warning he threw himself on his knees, holding her unresisting

hands in his.

"Demon or Goddess," he faltered, and his voice, even to his own ears,

had a strange sound. "What would you have with me? Speak, for what

purpose did you summon me? Who are you? What do you want with me?"

Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint tuneful echo.

"Foolish dreamer," she murmured half tenderly, half mockingly. "Is it

not enough for you to know that you have been found worthy to join the

few chosen ones to whom this earthly paradise is not a book with seven

seals? Like your sad-eyed, melancholy countrymen, you would analyze the

essence of love and try to dissolve it into its own heterogeneous

particles. If you were given the choice of the fairest woman you would

descend into the mouldering crypts of the past, to unearth the first and

last Helen of Troy. Ah! Is it not so? You Northmen prefer a

theoretical attachment to the body of living, breathing, loving woman?"

He looked at her surprised, perplexed, and paused an instant before he

made reply. Was she mocking him? Did she speak truth?

"Surely so peerless an enchantress, with admirers so numerous, cannot

find it worth her while to add a new worshipper to the idolatrous

throng?" he answered.

"Ah! Little you know," she murmured indolently, with a touch of cold

disdain in her accents. "My worshippers are my puppets, my slaves!

There is not a man amongst them," she added, raising her voice, "not a

man! They kiss the hand that spurns their touch! As for you," she

added, leaning forward, so that the dark shower of her hair brushed his

cheek and her drowsy eyes sank into his own, "As for you--you are from

the North.--I love a nature of strongly repressed and concentrated

passion, of a proud and chilly temper. Like our volcanoes they wear

crowns of ice, but fires unquenchable smother in their depths.

And--might not at a touch from the destined hand the flame in your heart

leap forth uncontrolled?"

Eckhardt met the enchantress' look with one of mingled dread and

intoxication. She smiled, and raising a goblet of wine to her lips,

kissed the brim and gave it to him with an indescribably graceful

swaying gesture of her whole form, which resembled a tall white lily

bending to the breeze. He seized the cup eagerly and drank thirstily

from it. Again her magic voice, more melodious than the sounds of

AEolian harps thrilled his ears and set his pulses to beating madly.

"But you have not yet told me," she whispered, while her head drooped

lower and lower, till her dark fragrant tresses touched his brow, "you

have not yet told me that you love me?"

Was it the purple wine that was so heavy on his senses? Heavier was the

drowsy spell of the enchantress' eyes. Eckhardt started up. His heart

ached with the memory of Ginevra, and a dull pang shot through his soul.

But the spell that was upon him was too heavy to be broken by human

effort. Nothing short of the thunder of Heaven could save him now.

Theodora's words chimed in his ear, while her hands clasped his own with

their soft, electrifying touch. With a supreme effort he endeavoured to

shake off the spell, into whose ravishment he was being slowly but

surely drawn, his efforts at resistance growing more feeble and feeble

every moment.

Again the voice of the Siren sent its musical cadence through his brain

in the fateful question:

"Do you love me?"

Eckhardt attempted to draw back, but could not.

Entwining her body with his arms, he devoured her beauty with his eyes.

From the crowning masses of her dusky hair, over the curve of her white

shoulders and bosom, down to the blue-veined feet in the glistening

sandals, his gaze wandered hungrily, searchingly, passionately. His

heart beat with wild, mad desire, but, though his lips moved, no words

were audible.

She too, was silent, apparently watching the effect of her spell upon

him, sure of the ultimate fateful result. In reality she listened

intently, as if expecting some unwelcome intrusion, and once her dark

fear-struck eyes tried to penetrate the deep shadows of the grotto. She

had heard something stir,--and a mad fear had seized her heart.

Eckhardt, unconscious of the woman's misgivings, gazed upon her as one

dazed. He felt, if he could but speak the one word, he would be saved

and yet--something warned him that, if that word escaped his lips, he

would be lost. Half recumbent on her couch, Theodora watched her victim

narrowly. A smile of delicate derision parted her lips, as she said:

"What ails you? Are you afraid of me? Can you not be happy, Eckhardt,"

she whispered into his brain, "happy as other men,--and loved?"

She bent toward him with arms outstretched. Closely she watched his

every gesture, endeavouring, in her great fear, to read his thoughts.

"I cannot," he replied with a moan, "alas--I cannot!"

"And why not?" the enchantress whispered, bending closer toward him.

She must make him her own, she must win the terrible wager; from out of

the gloom she felt two eyes burning upon her with devilish glee. She

preferred instant death to a life by the side of him she hated with all

the strength of a woman's hate for the man who has lied to her, deceived

her, and ruined her life. Noting the fateful effect of her

blandishments upon him, she threw herself with a sudden movement against

Eckhardt's breast, entwining him so tightly with her arms that she

seemed to draw the very breath from him. Her splendid dark eyes, ablaze

with passion, sank into his, her lips curved in a sweet, deadly smile.

Roused to the very height of delirium, Eckhardt wound his arms round

Theodora's body. A dizziness had seized him. For a moment

Ginevra--past, present and future seemed forgotten. Closer and closer he

felt himself drawn towards the fateful abyss--slowly the enchantress was

drawing him onward,--until there would be no more resistance,--all

flaming delirium, and eternal damnation.

With one white arm she reached for the goblet, but ere her fingers

touched it, a shadowy hand, that seemed to come from nowhere and belong

to no visible body, changed the position of the drinking vessels.

Neither noted it. Theodora kissed the brim of the first goblet and

started to sip from its contents when a sudden pressure on her shoulder

caused her to look up. Her terror at what she saw was so great that it

choked her utterance. Two terrible eyes gazed upon her from a white,

passion-distorted face, which silently warned her not to drink. So great

was her terror, that she noticed not that Eckhardt had taken the goblet

from her outstretched hand, and putting it to his lips on the very place

where the sweetness of her mouth still lingered, drained it to the

dregs.

Wild-eyed with terror she stared at the man before her. A strange

sensation had come over him. His brain seemed to be on fire. His

resistance was vanquished. He could not have gone, had he wished to.

The night was still. The silence was rendered even more profound by the

rustling of the storm among the leaves.

Suddenly Eckhardt's hand went to his head. He started to rise from his

kneeling position, staggered to his feet, then as if struck by lightning

he fell heavily against the mosaic of the floor.

With a wild shriek of terror, Theodora had risen to her feet--then she

sank back on the couch staring speechlessly at what was passing before

her. The gaunt form of a monk, clad in the habit of the hermits of

Mount Aventine, had rushed into the grotto, just as Eckhardt fell from

the effect of the drug. Lifting him up, as if he were a mere toy, the

monk rushed out into the open and disappeared with his burden, while

four eyes followed him in speechless dread and dismay.

*CHAPTER III*

*THE ELIXIR OF LOVE*

It was late on the following evening, when in the hermitage of Nilus of

Gaeta, Eckhardt woke from the death-like stupor which had bound his

limbs since the terrible scenes of the previous night. Thanks to the

antidotes applied by the friar as soon as he reached the open, the

deadly effect of the poison had been stemmed ere it had time to

penetrate Eckhardt's system, but even despite this timely precaution,

the benumbing effect of the drug was not to be avoided, and during the

time when the stupor maintained its sway Nilus had not for a moment

abandoned the side of his patient. A burning thirst consumed him, as he

awoke. Raising himself on his elbows and vainly endeavouring to

reconcile his surroundings, the monk who was seated at the foot of his

roughly improvised bed rose and brought him some water. It was Nilus

himself, and only after convincing himself that the state of the

Margrave's condition was such as to warrant his immediately satisfying

the flood of inquiries addressed to him, did the hermit go over the

events of the preceding night, starting from the point where Eckhardt

had lost consciousness and his own intervention had saved him.

Eckhardt's hand went to his head which still felt heavy and ached. His

brain reeled at the account which Nilus gave him, and there was a

choking dryness in his throat when the friar accused Theodora of the

deed.

"For such as she the world was made. For such as she fools and slaves

abase themselves," the monk concluded his account. "Pray that your eyes

may never again behold her accursed face."

Eckhardt made no reply. What could he say in extenuation of his

presence in the groves? And by degrees, as consciousness and memory

returned, as he strained his reasoning faculties in the endeavour to

find some cause for the woman's attempt to poison him, after having

mocked him with her fatal likeness to Ginevra--his most acute logic

could not reconcile her actions. For a moment he tried to persuade

himself that he was in a dream, and he strove in vain to wake from it.

It was amazing in what brief time and with what vividness all that could

render death terrible, and this death of all most terrible, rushed upon

his imagination. Despite the languor and inertness which still

continued, one terrible certainty rose before him. Far from having

solved the mystery, it had intensified itself to a degree that seemed to

make any further attempt at solution hopeless. During the twilight

consciousness of his senses numerous faces swam around him,--but of all

these only one had remained with him, Ginevra's pale and beautiful

countenance, her sweet but terrible eyes. But the ever-recurring

thought was madness.--Ginevra was dead.

But the hours spent in the seclusion of the friar's hermitage were not

entirely lost to Eckhardt. They ripened a preconceived and most

fantastic plan in his mind, which he no sooner remembered, than he began

to think seriously of its execution.

A second night spent in Nilus's hermitage had sufficiently restored

Eckhardt's vitality to enable him to leave it on the following morning.

After having taken leave of the monk, confessing himself his debtor for

life, the Margrave chose the road toward the Imperial palace, as his

absence was likely to give rise to strange rumours, which might retard

or prevent the task he had resolved to accomplish. He was in a state

bordering on nervous collapse, when he reached the gates of the palace,

where the Count Palatine, in attendance, ushered him into an ante-room

pending his admission to Otto's presence. Eckhardt's thoughts were

gloomy and his countenance forbidding as he entered, and he did not

notice the presence of Benilo, the Chamberlain. When the latter glanced

up from his occupation, his countenance turned to ashen hues and he

stared at the leader of the imperial hosts as one would at an apparition

from the beyond. The hands, which held a parchment, strangely

illuminated, shook so violently that he was compelled to place the

scroll on the table before him. Eckhardt had been so wrapt in his own

dark ruminations that he saw and heard nothing, thus giving Benilo an

opportunity to collect himself, though the stereotyped smile on the

Chamberlain's lips gave the lie to his pretense of continuing interested

in the contents of the chart which lay on the table before him.

But Benilo's restlessness, his eagerness to acquaint himself with the

purpose of Eckhardt's visit, did not permit him to continue the task in

which the general's entrance had found him engaged. The Chamberlain

seemed undaunted by Eckhardt's apparent preoccupation of mind.

"We have just achieved a signal victory," he addressed the Margrave

after a warm greeting, which was to veil his misgivings, while his

unsteady gaze roamed from the parchment on the table to Eckhardt's

clouded brow. "The Byzantine ceremonial will be henceforth observed at

the Imperial court."

"What shall it all lead to?" replied Eckhardt wearily.

"To the fulfilment of the emperor's dream," Benilo replied with his

blandest smile, "his dream of the ten-fold crown of Constantine

Porphyrogenitus."

"I thought the Saxon crown weighed heavily enough."

"That is because your crown is material," Benilo deigned to expound,

"not the symbolic crown of the East, which embodies all the virtues of

the gold and iron. It was a stupendous task which confronted us--but

together we have solved the problem. In the Graphia, after much vain

research and study, and in the 'Origines' of Isidor, we found that which

shall henceforth constitute the emblem of the Holy Roman Empire; not the

Iron Crown of Lombardy, nor the Silver Crown of Aix-la-Chapelle, nor the

Golden Crown of Rome--but all three combined with the seven of the

East."

"Ten crowns?" exclaimed Eckhardt aghast. "On the emperor's frail brow?"

"Nay," spoke Benilo, with the same studied smile upon his lips, while he

relinquished not for a moment the basilisk gaze with which he followed

every movement of the Margrave. "Nay! They oppress not the brow of the

anointed. The Seven Crowns of the East are: The crown of Ivy, the crown

of the Olive, the crown of Poplar Branches and Oak, the crown of

Laurels, the Mitra of Janus, the crown of the Feathers of the Pea-fowl,

and last of all the crown set with diamonds, which Diocletian borrowed

from the King of the Persians and whereon appeared the inscription:

'Roma Caput Mundi Regit Orbis Frena Rotundi.'"

Eckhardt listened half dazed to this exhibition of antiquarian learning

on the part of the Chamberlain. What were these trifles to avail the

King in establishing order in the discordant chaos of the Roman world?

But Benilo was either in excellent spirits over the result of his

antiquarian researches which had made him well nigh indispensable to

Otto, and into which he condescended to initiate so unlettered an

individual as Eckhardt; or he tormented the latter with details which he

knew wearied the great leader, to keep his mind from dwelling on

dangerous matters. Thus continuing his information on these lines with a

suave air of superiority, he cited the treatise of Pigonius concerning

the various modes of triumph and other antiquated splendours as

enumerated in the Codex, until Eckhardt's head swam with meaningless

titles and newly created offices. Even an admiral had been appointed:

Gregory of Tusculum. In truth, he had no fleet to command, because

there existed no fleet, but the want had been anticipated. Then there

were many important offices to be filled, with names long as the ancient

triumphal course; and would not the Romans feel flattered by these

changes? Would they not willingly console themselves with the loss of

their municipal liberties, knowing that Hungary, and Poland, Spain and

Germany were to be Roman provinces as of old?

Eckhardt saw through it all.

Knowing Otto's fantastic turn of mind, Benilo was guiding him slowly but

surely away from life, into the wilderness of a decayed civilization,

whose luring magic was absorbing his vital strength. Else why this

effort to rear an edifice which must crumble under its own weight, once

the architect was removed from this hectic sphere?

With the reckless enthusiasm of his character the imperial youth had

plunged into the deep ocean of learning, to whose shores his studies

with Benilo conducted him. The animated pictures which the ponderous

tomes presented, into whose dust and must he delved, the dramatic

splendour of the narrative in which the glowing fancies of the

chroniclers had clothed the stirring events of the times, deeply

impressed his susceptible mind, just as the chords of AEolian harps are

mute till the chance breeze passes which wakes them into passionate

music. Gerbert, now Sylvester II, had no wish to stifle nor even to

stem this natural sensibility, but rather to divert its energies into

its proper channels, for he was too deeply versed in human science not

to know that even the eloquence of religion is cold and powerless,

unless kindled by those fixed emotions and sparkling thoughts which only

poetical enthusiasm can strike out of the hard flint of logic.

But now the activity of Otto's genius, lacking the proper channels,

vented its wild profusion in inert speculation and dreamy reverie.

Indistinct longings ventured out on that shimmering restless sea of love

and glory, which his imagination painted in the world, a vague yearning

for the mysterious which was hinted at in that mediaeval lore.

All things were possible in those legends. No scent of autumn haunted

the deep verdure of those forests, even the harsh immutable laws of

nature seemed to yield to their magic. Death and Despair and Sorrow

were but fore-shadowed angels, not the black fiends of Northern imagery.

Their heroes and heroines died, but reclining on beds of violets, the

songs of nightingales sweetly warbling them to rest.

And the son of the Greek princess resented fiercely any intrusion in to

his paradise. It was a thankless task to recall him to the hour and to

reality.

The appearance of a page, who summoned Eckhardt into Otto's presence,

put an end to Benilo's effusive archaeology, and as the Margrave

disappeared in the emperor's cabinet, Benilo wondered how much he knew.

What transpired during his protracted audience remained for the present

the secret of those two. But when Eckhardt left the palace, his brow

was even more clouded than before. While his conference with Otto had

not been instrumental in dissipating the dread misgivings which tortured

his mind, he had found himself face to face with the revelation that a

fraud had been perpetrated upon him. For Otto disclaimed all knowledge

of signing any order which relieved Eckhardt of his command, flatly

declaring it a forgery. While its purpose was easy to divine, the

question remained whose interest justified his venturing so desperate a

chance? Eckhardt parted from his sovereign with the latter's full

approval of the course his leader intended to pursue, and so far from

granting him the dispensation once desired, Otto did not hesitate to

pronounce the vision which had interposed at the fatal moment between

Eckhardt and the fulfilment of his desire, a divine interposition.

Slowly the day drew to a close. The eve of the great festival

approached.

When darkness finally fell over the Capitoline hill, the old palace of

the Caesars seemed to waken to a new life. In the great reception hall

a gorgeous spectacle awaited the guests. The richly dressed crowds

buzzed like a swarm of bees. Their attires were iridescent, gorgeous in

fashions borrowed from many lands. The invasion of foreigners and the

enslavement of Italy could be read in the garbs of the Romans. The

robes of the women, fashioned after the supreme style of Constantinople,

hanging in heavy folds, stiff with gold and jewels, suggested rather

ecclesiastical vestments. The hair was confined in nets of gold.

Stephania, the consort of the Senator of Rome, was by common accord the

queen of the festival which this night was to usher in. Attracting, as

she did on every turn, the eyes of heedless admirers, her triumphant

beauty seemed to have chosen a fit device in the garb which adorned her,

some filmy gossamer web of India, embroidered with moths burning their

wings in flame.

Whether or no she was conscious of the lavish admiration of the Romans,

her eyes, lustrous under the dark tresses, were clear and cold; her

smile calm, her voice, as she greeted the arriving guests, melodious and

thrilling like the tones of a harp. Amid the noise and buzz, she seemed

a being apart, alien, solitary, like a water lily on some silent

moon-lit pool. At last a loud fanfare of trumpets and horns announced

the arrival of the German king. Attended by his suite the son of

Theophano, whose spiritualized beauty he seemed to have inherited,

received the homage of the Senator of Rome, the Cavalli, Caetani,

Massimi and Stephaneschi. Stephania was standing apart in a more remote

part of the hall, surrounded by women of the Roman nobility. Her face

flushed and paled alternately as she became aware of the commotion at

the entrance. The airy draperies of summer, which revealed rather than

concealed her divine beauty, gave her the appearance of a Circe,

conquering every heart at sight.

As she slowly advanced toward the imperial circle, with the three

appropriate reverences in use, the serene composure of her countenance

made it seem as if she had herself been born in purple. But as Otto's

gaze fell upon the consort of the Senator of Rome, he suddenly paused, a

deep pallor chasing the flush of joy from the beardless face. Was she

not the woman he had met at the gates of the confessional? A great pain

seized his heart as the thought came to him, that she of whom he had

dreamed ever since that day, she in whose love he had pictured to

himself a heaven, was the consort of another. Before him stood

Stephania, the wife of his former foe, the wife of the Senator of Rome.

And as he gazed into her large limpid eyes, at the exquisite contour of

her head, at the small crimson lips, the clear-cut beauty of the face,

of the tint of richest Carrara marble, Otto trembled. Unable to speak a

word, fearful lest he might betray his emotions, he seized the white,

firm hand which she extended to him with a bewitching smile.

"So we are to behold the King's majesty, at last," she said with a voice

whose very accent thrilled him through and through. "I thought you were

never going to do us that honour,--master of Rome, and master--of Rome's

mistress."

Her speech, as she bent slightly toward him, whispering rather than

speaking the last words, filled Otto's soul with intoxication. Stunned

by the manner of his reception, her mysterious words still ringing in

his ears, Otto muttered a reply, intelligible to none but herself,

nerving his whole nature to remain calm, though his heart beat so loudly

that he thought all present must hear its wild throbs even through his

imperial vestments.

As slowly, reluctantly he retreated from her presence, to greet the rest

of the assembled guests, Otto marked not the meaning-fraught exchange of

glances between the Senator of Rome and his wife. The smiles of the

beautiful women around him were as full of warning as the scowls of a

Roman mob. Once or twice Otto gazed as if by chance in the direction of

Stephania. Each time their eyes met. Truly, if the hatred of

Crescentius was a menace to his life, the favour of Stephania seemed to

summon him to dizzy, perilous heights.

At last the banquet was served, the company seated and amidst soft

strains of music, the festival took its course. Otto now had an

opportunity to study in detail the galaxy of profligate courtiers and

beauties, which shed their glare over the sunset of Crescentius's reign.

But so absorbed was he in the beauty of Stephania, that, though he

attempted to withdraw his eyes, lest their prolonged gaze should attract

observation, still they ever returned with increased and devouring

eagerness to feast upon her incomparable beauty, while with a strange

agony of mingled jealousy and anger he noted the court paid to the

beautiful wife of Crescentius by the Roman barons, chief among them

Benilo. It seemed, as if the latter wanted to urge the king to some

open and indiscreet demonstration by the fire of his own admiration,

and, dear as he was to his heart, Otto heaved a sigh of relief at the

thought that he had guarded his secret, which if revealed, would place

him beyond redemption in the power of his enemy, the Senator.

Stephania herself seemed for the nonce too much absorbed in her own

amusements to notice the emotions she had evoked in the young king of

the Germans. But when she chanced to turn her smiling eyes from the

Senator, her husband, she suddenly met the ardent gaze of Otto riveted

upon her with burning intensity. The smile died on her lips and for a

moment the colour faded from her cheeks. Otto flushed a deep crimson

and played in affected indifference with the tassels of his sword, and

for some moments they seemed to take no further heed of each other.

What happened at the banquet, what was spoken and the speakers, to Otto

it was one whirling chaos. He saw nothing; he heard nothing. The gaze

of Stephania, the wife of Crescentius, had cast its spell over him and

there was but one thought in his mind,--but one dream in his heart.

At the request of some one, some of the guests changed their seats.

Otto noted it not. Peals of laughter reverberated through the high

arched Sala; some one recited an ode on the past greatness of Rome,

followed by loud applause; to Otto it was a meaningless sound. Suddenly

he heard his own name from lips whose tones caused him to start, as if

electrified.

Stephania sat by his side. Crescentius seemed conversing eagerly with

some of the barons. Raising her arm, white as fallen snow, she poured a

fine crimson wine into a goblet, until it swelled to the golden brim.

There was a simultaneous bustle of pages and attendants, offering fruits

and wine to the guests, and Otto mechanically took some grapes from a

salver which was presented to him, but never for a moment averted his

gaze from Stephania, until she lifted the goblet to her lips.

"To thee!" she whispered with a swift glance at Otto, which went to his

heart's core. She sipped from the goblet, then, bending to him, held it

herself to his lips. His trembling hands for a moment covered her own

and he drank strangely deep of the crimson wine, which made his senses

reel, and in the trance in which their eyes met, neither noticed the

sphinx-like expression on the face of Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain.

But if the wine, of which Otto had partaken with Stephania, was not in

reality compounded of magic ingredients, the most potent love philtre

could scarcely have been more efficacious. For the first time it seemed

as if he had yielded up his whole soul and being to the fascination of

marvellous beauty, and with such loveliness exhausting upon him all its

treasures of infinite charm, wit and tenderness, stirred by every motive

of triumph and rivalry,--even if a deceptive apology had not worked in

his own mind, it would scarcely have been possible to resist the spell.

The banquet passed off in great splendour, enlivened by the most

glittering and unscrupulous wit. Thousands of lamps shed their

effulgence on the scene, revealing toward the end a fantastic pageant,

descending the grand stair-case to some equally strange and fantastic

music. It was a procession of the ancient deities; but so great was the

illiterate state of mind among the Romans of that period, that the ideas

they represented of the olden time were hopelessly perplexed and an

antiquarian, had there been one present, would have thrown up his hands

in despair at the incongruous attire of the pagan divinities who had

invaded the most Christian city. During this procession Otto's eyes for

the third time sought those of Stephania. She seemed to feel it, for

she turned and her lips responded with a smile.

The night passed like some fantastic dream, conjured up from fairy land.

And Otto carried his dreaming heart back to the lonely palace on the

Aventine.

*CHAPTER IV*

*THE SECRET OF THE TOMB*

While the revelling on the Capitoline hill was at its height, Eckhardt

had approached Benilo and drawing him aside, engaged him in lengthy

conversation. The Chamberlain's countenance had lost its studied calm

and betrayed an amazement which vainly endeavoured to vent itself in

adequate utterance. He appeared to offer a strenuous opposition to

Eckhardt's request, an opposition which yielded only when every argument

seemed to have failed. At last they had parted, Eckhardt passing

unobserved to a terrace and gaining a path that led through an orange

grove behind the Vatican gardens. A few steps brought him to a gate,

which opened on a narrow vicolo. Here he paused and clapped his hands

softly together. The signal was repeated from the other side and

Eckhardt thereupon lifted the heavy iron latch, which fastened the gate

on the inner side and, passing out, carefully closed it behind him. Here

he was joined by another personage wrapt in a long, dark cloak, and

together they proceeded through a maze of dark, narrow and unfrequented

alleys. Lane after lane they traversed, all unpaved and muddy. Another

ten minutes' walk between lightless houses, whose doors and windows were

for the most part closed and barred, and they reached an old time-worn

dwelling with a low unsightly doorway. It was secured by strong

fastenings of bolts and bars, as though its tenant had sufficient

motives for affecting privacy and retirement. The very nature of his

calling would however have secured him from intrusion either by day or

by night, from any one not immediately in need of his services. For

here lived Il Gobbo, the grave digger, a busy personage in the Rome of

those days. Eckhardt and his companion exchanged a swift glance as they

approached the uncanny dwelling; eyeless, hoary with vegetation, rooted

here and there, the front of the house gave no welcome. Eckhardt

whispered a question to his companion, which was answered in the

affirmative. Then he bade him knock. After a wait of brief duration,

the summons was answered by a low cough within. Shuffling footsteps

were heard, then the unbarring of a door, followed by the creaking of

hinges, and the low bent figure of an old man appeared. Il Gobbo, the

grave digger wore a loose gray tunic, which reached to his knees. What

was visible of his countenance was cadaverous and ashen gray, as that of

a corpse. His small rat-like eyes, whose restless vigilance argued some

deficiency or warping of the brain, a tendency, however remote, to

insanity, scrutinized the stranger with marked suspicion, while a long

nose, curving downward over a projecting upper lip, which seemed in

perpetual tremor, imbued his countenance with something strangely

Mephistophelian.

In a very few words Eckhardt's companion requested the grave digger to

make ready and follow them, and that worthy, seeing nothing strange in a

summons of this sort, complied at once, took pick and spade, and after

having locked and barred his habitation, asked his solicitor to which

burial grounds he was to accompany them.

"To San Pancrazio," was Eckhardt's curt reply. The silence had become

almost insufferable to him, and something in the manner of his speech

caused the grave digger to bestow on him a swift glance. Then he

preceded them in silence on the well-known way.

It was a wonderful night.

There was not a breath of air to stir the dying leaves of the trees.

The clouds, which had risen at sunset in the West, had vanished, leaving

the sky unobscured, arching deep blue over the yellow moon.

As they approached the Ripetta, the grave digger suddenly paused and,

facing the Margrave and his companion, inquired where the corpse was

awaiting them.

A strange, jarring laugh broke from Eckhardt's lips.

"Never fear, my honest friend! It is a very well conditioned corpse,

that will play us no pranks and run away. Corpses do sometimes--so I

have been told. What think you, honest Il Gobbo?"

The grave digger bestowed a glance upon his interlocutor, which left

little doubt as to what he thought of his patron's sanity, then he

crossed himself and hastened onward. The Tiber lay now on their left,

and an occasional flash revealed the turbid waves rolling down toward

the sea in the moonlight. Eckhardt and his companion exchanged not a

word, as silently they strode behind their uncanny guide. On their left

hand now appeared the baths of Caracalla, their external magnificence

slowly crumbling to decay, waterless and desolate. Towering on their

right rose the Caelian hill in the moonlight, covered with ruins and

neglected gardens. The rays of the higher rising moon fell through the

great arches of the Neronian Aqueduct and near by were the round church

of St. Stephen and a cloister dedicated to St. Erasmus. As they

proceeded over the narrow grass-grown road, the silence which

encompassed them was as intense as among the Appian sepulchres. At the

gate of San Sebastiano, all traces of the road vanished. A winding path

conducted them through a narrow valley, the silence of which was only

broken by the occasional hoot of an owl, or the flitting across their

path of a bat, which like an evil thought, seemed afraid of its own

shadow. Then they passed the ancient church of Santa Ursula, which for

many years formed the center of a churchyard. The path became more

sterile and desolate with every step, only a few dwarfish shrubs

breaking the monotony, to make it appear even more like a wilderness,

until they came upon a ruined wall, and following its course for some

distance, reached a heavy iron gate. It gave a dismal, creaking sound as

Il Gobbo pushed it open and entered the churchyard of San Pancrazio in

advance of his companions.

Pausing ere he continued upon a way as yet unknown to him, he again

turned questioningly toward his mysterious summoners, for as far as his

eye could reach in the bright moonlight, he could discover no trace of a

funeral cortege or ever so small number of mourners. Instead of

satisfying Il Gobbo's curiosity, Eckhardt briefly ordered him to follow

him, and the grave digger, shaking his head with grave doubt, followed

the mysterious stranger, who seemed so familiar with this abode of

Death. They traversed the churchyard at a rapid pace, until they

reached a mortuary chapel situated in a remote region. Here Eckhardt

and his companion paused, and the former, turning about and facing Il

Gobbo, pointed to a grave in the shadows of the chapel.

"Know you this grave?" the Margrave accosted the grave digger, pointing

to the grass-plot at his feet.

The grave digger seemed to grope through the depths of his memory; then

he bent low as if to decipher the inscription on the stone, but this

effort was in so far superfluous, as he could not read.

"Here lies one Ginevra,--the wife of the German Commander--"

He paused, again searching his memory, but this time in vain.

"Eckhardt," supplied the Margrave himself.

"Eckhardt--Eckhardt," the grave digger echoed, crossing himself at the

sound of the dreaded name.

"Open the grave!" Eckhardt broke into Il Gobbo's babbling, who had been

wondering to what purpose he had been brought here.

Il Gobbo stared up at the speaker as if he mistrusted his hearing, but

made no reply.

"Open the grave!" Eckhardt repeated, leaning upon his sword.

Il Gobbo shook his head. No doubt the man was mad; else why should he

prefer the strange request? He looked questioningly at Eckhardt's

companion, as if expecting the latter to interfere. But he moved not.

A strange fear began to creep over the grave digger.

"Here is a purse of gold, enough to dispel the qualms of your

conscience," Eckhardt spoke with terrible firmness in his tones,

offering Il Gobbo a leather purse of no mean size. But the latter

pushed it back with abhorrence.

"I cannot--I dare not. Who are you to prefer this strange request?"

"I am Eckhardt, the general! Open the grave!"

Il Gobbo cringed as though he had been struck a blow from some invisible

hand.

"I dare not--I dare not," he whined, deprecating the proffered gift.

"The sin would be visited upon my head.--It is written: Disturb not the

dead."

A terrible look passed into Eckhardt's face.

"Is this purse not heavy enough? I will add another."

"It is not that--it is not that," Il Gobbo replied, almost weeping with

terror. "I dread the vengeance of the dead! They will not permit the

sacrilege to pass unpunished."

"Then let the punishment fall on my head!" replied Eckhardt with

terrible voice. "Take your spade, old man, for by the Almighty God who

looks down upon us, you will not leave this place alive, unless you do

as you are told."

The old grave digger trembled in every limb. Helplessly he gazed about;

imploringly he looked up into the face of Eckhardt's immobile companion,

but he read nothing in the eyes of these two, save unrelenting

determination. Instinctively he knew that no argument would avail to

deter them from their mad purpose.

Eckhardt watched the old man closely.

"You dug this grave yourself, three years ago," he then spoke in a tone

strangely mingled of despair and irony. "It is a poor grave digger who

permits his dead to leave their cold and narrow berth and go forth among

the living in the form they bore on earth! It has been whispered to

me," he continued with a terrible laugh, "that some of your graves are

shallow. I would fain be convinced with my own eyes, just to be able to

give your calumniators the lie! Therefore, good Il Gobbo, take up your

spade with all speed, and imagine, as you perform your task, that you

are not opening this grave to disturb the repose of her who sleeps

beneath the sod, but preparing a reception to one still in the flesh!

Proceed!"

The last word was spoken with such menace that the grave digger

reluctantly complied, and taking up the spade, which he had dropped, he

pushed it slowly into the sod. Leaning silently on his sword, his face

the pallor of death, Eckhardt and his companion watched the progress of

the terrible work, watched one shovel of earth after the other fly up,

piling up by the side of the grave; watched the oblong opening grow

deeper and deeper, till after a breathless pause of some duration the

spade of the grave digger was heard to strike the top of the coffin.

Il Gobbo, who all but his head stood now in the grave, looked up

imploringly to Eckhardt, hoping that at the last moment he would desist

from the terrible sacrilege he was about to commit. But when he read

only implacable determination in the commander's face, he again turned

to his task and continued to throw up the earth until the coffin stood

free and unimpeded in its narrow berth.

"I cannot raise it up," the old man whined. "It is too heavy."

"We will assist you! Out it shall come if all the devils in hell clung

to it from beneath. Bring your ropes and bring them quickly! Hear

you?" thundered Eckhardt in a frenzy. His self-enforced calm was fast

giving way before the terrible ordeal he was passing through.

"Would it not be safer to go down and open the lid?" questioned

Eckhardt's companion, for the first time breaking the silence.

"There is not room enough,--unless the berth is widened," Eckhardt

replied. Then he turned to Il Gobbo, who was slowly scrambling out of

the grave.

"Widen the berth--we will come down to you!"

The grave digger returned to his task; then after a time, which seemed

eternity to those waiting above, his head again appeared in the opening.

One shovel of earth after another flew up at the feet of Eckhardt and

his companion. Again and again they heard the spade strike against the

coffin, till at last something like a groan out of the gloom below

informed them that the task had been accomplished.

"Have you any tools?" Eckhardt shouted to Il Gobbo.

"None to serve that end," stammered the grave digger.

"Then take your spade and prise the lid open!" cried Eckhardt. He was

trembling like an aspen, and his breath came hard through his

half-closed lips. The expression of his face and his demeanour were

such as to vanquish the last scruples of Il Gobbo, who belaboured the

coffin with much good will, which was mocked by the result, for it

seemed to have been hermetically sealed.

After waiting some time in deadly, harrowing suspense, Eckhardt

addressed his companion.

"I hate to abase my good sword for such a purpose,--but the coffin shall

be opened." And without warning he bounded down into the grave, while

Il Gobbo, thinking his last moment at hand, had dropped pick and spade,

and stood, more dead than alive, at the foot of the grave.

Picking up the grave digger's spade, Eckhardt dealt the coffin such a

terrific blow that he splintered its top to atoms. A second blow

completely severed the lid, and it lurched heavily to one side, lodging

between the coffin and the earth wall.

The ensuing silence was intense.

The moon, which had risen high in the heavens, illumined with her beams

the chasm in which Eckhardt stood, bending over the coffin. What his

eyes beheld was too terrible for words to express. Only one tress of

dark silken hair had escaped the dread havoc of death, which the open

coffin revealed. It was a sight such as would cause the blood to freeze

in the veins of the bravest. It was the visible execution of the

judgment pronounced in the garden of Eden: "Dust thou art, and to dust

thou shall return."

Only one dark silken tress of all that splendour of body and youth!

Eckhardt leaped from the grave and stood aside, leaving it for his

companion to give his final instructions to Il Gobbo, the grave digger,

and the reward for his night's labour.

As they strode from the churchyard of San Pancrazio, neither spoke. The

havoc of death, which Eckhardt's eyes had beheld, the contrast between

the image of Ginevra, such as it lived in his memory, and the sight

which had met his eyes, had re-opened every wound in his heart. No beam

of hope, no thought of heavenly mercy, penetrated the night of his soul.

His heart seemed steel-cased and completely walled up. He could not

even shed a tear. One hour had worked a dreadful transformation.

Silently the Margrave and his companion left the churchyard. Silently

they turned toward the city. At the base of Aventine, Benilo parted

from Eckhardt, himself more dead than alive, promising to see him on the

following day. He dared not trust himself even to ask Eckhardt what he

had seen. There would be time enough when his terrible frenzy had

subsided.

As Eckhardt continued upon his way, he grew more calm. The feast of

Death, which he had dared to break into, while for a time completely

stupefying him with its horrors, seemed at least to have brought proof

positive, that whoever Ginevra's double, it was not Ginevra returned to

earth. There was much in that thought to comfort his soul, and after

the fresh air of night had cooled his fevered brow, saner reflections

began to gain sway over his whirling brain.

But they did not endure. What he had seen proved nothing. Another body

might have been substituted in the coffin. The supposition was

monstrous indeed--yet even the wildest surmises seemed justified when

thrown in the scales against the fatal likeness of the woman who had

drawn him from the altars of Christ, had frustrated his design to become

a monk, and had, as he believed, attempted his life. Could he but find

the monk who had conducted the last rites! He had searched for him in

every cloister and sanctuary in Rome, yet all those of whom he inquired

disclaimed all knowledge of his abode. Several times the thought had

recurred to Eckhardt of returning to the Groves, to seek a second

interview with the woman, and thus for ever to silence his doubts. But

a strange dread had assailed and restrained him from the execution.

There was something in the woman's eyes he had never seen in Ginevra's,

and he felt that he would inevitably succumb, should he ever again stand

face to face with her. He almost wished that he had followed Benilo's

advice,--that he had refrained from an act prompted by frenzy and

despair. Vain regrets! He must find the monk, if he was still in Rome.

Though everything and everybody seemed to have conspired against him

nothing should bend him from his course.

*CHAPTER V*

*THE GROTTOS OF EGERIA*

For the following day the Senator of Rome had arranged a Festival of

Pan, and the place appointed for the divertissement was one which the

Seneschal of the Decameron might have chosen as fit for the reception of

his luxurious masters, where every object was in harmony with the

delicious and charmed existence which they had devised in defiance of

Death. Arcades of vines, bright with the gold and russet foliage of

autumn, ascended in winding terraces to a height, on which they

converged, forming a spacious canopy over an expanse of brightest

emerald turf, inlaid with a mosaic of flowers. In the centre there was

a fountain, which sent its spray to a great height in the clear air,

refreshing soul and body with the harmony of its waters. Between the

interstices of the vines, magnificent views of the whole surrounding

country were offered to the eye, to which feature perhaps, or to the

effect of a dazzling variety of late roses, which grew among the vines,

and the lofty cypresses which made the elevation a conspicuous object in

every direction, it owes its present designation of Belvedere.

Stephania's spell had worked powerfully on its intended victim.

Surrounded by everything which could kindle the fires of Love and

stimulate the imagination, exposed to the influence of her marvellous

beauty and the infinite charm of her individuality, Otto was devoured by

a passion, which hourly increased, despite the struggle which he put

forth to resist it. Stephania's absence had taught him how necessary

she had become to his existence, and although he was well informed that

she rarely quitted Castel San Angelo, he was yet tortured by the wildest

fancies, entirely oblivious that he had given all his youth, his love,

his heart to a beautiful phantom,--the wife of another, who could never

be his own. And though he endeavoured to reason with his madness,

though he questioned himself where it would lead to, in what strange

manner he had absorbed the poison which rioted in his system, it was of

no avail. The dictates of Fate vanquish the paltry laws of mortals.

This love had come to him unbidden--uncalled. Why must the soul remain

for ever isolated when the unbounded feast of beauty was spread to all

the senses? And was it not too late to retreat? It was the last trump

of the tempter.

He won.

As he approached the Minotaurus, Otto's hope brightened with the tints

of the rainbow. For the first time since his return from Monte Gargano

he had discarded his usual cumbrous habiliments, and though his garb was

still that prescribed by the court ceremonial, it added much to display

his princely person to advantage. Confiding much more in the secrecy of

his movements than in the protection of his attendants, Otto had left

the palace on the Aventine unobserved and arrived in the vale of Egeria

with a whirl of passion and a rush of recollections, which not only took

from him all power, but every wish of resistance,--a far more dangerous

symptom.

Stephania's duenna was in waiting and informed him that the latter had

dismissed her ladies to amuse themselves at their pleasure in the

gardens, while Stephania herself was wreathing a garland for the evening

in the Egerian Grotto, which formed the centre of the fantastic

labyrinth called the Minotaurus, from an antique statue of the monster

which adorned it. Slipping a ring of great value on the old dame's

finger, as a testimony, he said, of his gratitude, for watching over her

mistress, Otto hastened onward. His heart beat so heavily when he came

within view of the rose-matted arches leading to the ancient grotto,

that he was obliged to pause to recover his breath. At that moment a

voice fell upon his ear, but it was not the voice of Stephania, and with

a feeling almost of suffocation in the intensity of his passion, Otto

drew aside the foliage to ascertain whether or not his senses had belied

him.

The figure of the Minotaurus was cast in bronze, a monstrous bull,

crouched, head to the ground, on the marble pavement of the temple.

Passing the statue, Otto made for the grotto indicated by his guide,

and, raising the tapestry of ivy, which concealed it, disappeared

within. Guided by the warm evening light to its entrance, he hesitated

as if apprehending some treachery. Then, with quick determination he

groped his way into the cavern, paused somewhat suddenly and looked

about.

It was deserted, but a faint glimmer lured him to the background, where

a fountain gleamed in the purple twilight.

"Rash mortal," said a voice, in tones that made his heart jump to his

throat, "I think you are now as near as devout worshippers are wont to

approach to my waves, though, as one of the initiated, the vestal nymphs

of these caves bid you very welcome."

"I have kept my faith," Otto replied, pausing before the veiled

apparition which sat on the rim of the fountain. "But your veil hides

you as effectually from my gaze as a mountain."

His agitation betrayed itself in his wavering tones.

"Are you afraid," she asked, noting his hesitancy, "lest I should prove

the fiend who tempted Cyprianus?"

"All fears redouble in the darkness. Let me see your face!"

"Why have you come here?"

"Why have you summoned me?"

"Perhaps to test your courage."

"I fear nothing!"

"One word of mine, one gesture,--and you are my prisoner."

Otto remained standing. His face was pale, but no trace of fear

appeared thereon.

"I trust you."

"I am a Roman,--and your enemy! I am the enemy of your people!"

"I trust you!"

"Suppose I had lured you hither to end for ever this unbearable state?"

"I trust you!"

Stephania's eyes cowered beneath Otto's gaze. Rising abruptly she

averted her head, but every trace of colour had left her face as she

raised the veil. Then she turned slowly and extended her hand. Otto

grasped it, pressing it to his lips in an ecstasy of joy, then he drew

her down to the seat she had abandoned, kneeling by her side.

For a moment she gazed at him thoughtfully.

"What do you want of me?" she then asked abruptly.

"I would have you be my friend," he stammered, idol-worship in his eyes.

"Is a woman's friendship so rare a commodity, that you come to me?" she

replied, drawing her hand from him.

"I have never known woman's love nor friendship,--and it is yours I

want."

Stephania drew a long breath. Truly,--it required no effort on her part

to lead him on. He made her task an easy one. Yet there rose in her

heart a spark of pity. The complete trust of this boy-king was to the

wife of Crescentius a novel sensation in the atmosphere of doubt and

suspicion in which she had grown up. It was almost a pity to shatter

the temple in which he had placed her as goddess.

The mood held sway but a moment, then with a cry of delirious gayety,

she wrote the word "Friendship" rapidly on the water.

"Look," she said, "scarcely a ripple remains! That is the end. Let us

but add another word, 'Farewell'--and let the trace it shall leave tell

when we shall meet again."

The words died on Otto's lips. He could not fathom the lightning change

which had come over her. With mingled sadness and passion he gazed upon

the lovely face, so pale and cold.

"Let us not part thus," he stammered.

Stephania had risen abruptly, shaking herself free of his kneeling form.

"What is it all to lead to?" she questioned.

Otto rose slowly to his feet. Reeling as if stunned by a blow, he

staggered after her.

"Do not leave me thus," he begged with outstretched arms.

Stephania started away from him, as if in terror.

"Do not touch me,--as you are a man--"

Otto's hand went to his head. Was he waking? Was he dreaming? Was

this the same woman who had but a moment ago--

He had not time to think out the thought.

He felt his neck encircled by an airy form and arms, and lips whose

sweetness made his senses reel were breathlessly pressed upon his own.

But for an evanescent instant the sensation endured.